4 ms·

I always found the level of detail in the clear flat drawings of Tintin comics impressive. It is good to know the name of the style after all these years.

mikepurvis 5y ago
I was a big Tintin fan as a kid, too, so this is super nostalgic. Looking back on it as an adult, I wonder if this style was a product of the time— for example, Disney's Snow White (1937) has a very similar approach, with flat cel-based animation on top of lush, realistic, painted backgrounds.
- goto11 5y ago
  The classic Disney style is due to technical constraints. Animation was inked and painted on transparent sheets overlayed on static backgrounds. The animated figures have to be simple and well-defined shapes because otherwise it is just too much work to ink and paint consistently over thousands of sheets (12 sheets per second of film!). The backgrounds are static though, so they can be arbitrarily subtle and detailed. Movements over backgrounds is done by moving the camera over a larger painting. The stylistic difference between background and animation can be quite jarring though, and ligne claire actually attempt the opposite effect, that figures and backgrounds have exactly the same style and level of detail.
ur-whale 5y ago
>I always found the level of detail impressive If you're into level of detail, you should take a gander at Hard-Boiled [1][2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Boiled_(comics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Boiled_(comics) [2] https://www.cuartomundo.cl/2018/03/26/hard-boiled-1990-de-frank-miller-y-geof-darrow-gramatica-violenta/ https://www.cuartomundo.cl/2018/03/26/hard-boiled-1990-de-fr...
- noisy_boy 5y ago
  That is very impressive level of detail though it pushes the boundary of "clean" and gets too "real" (and depending on what you are looking for, that may be a good thing). Thanks for sharing.

mikepurvis 5y ago

I was a big Tintin fan as a kid, too, so this is super nostalgic. Looking back on it as an adult, I wonder if this style was a product of the time— for example, Disney's Snow White (1937) has a very similar approach, with flat cel-based animation on top of lush, realistic, painted backgrounds.

goto11 5y ago
The classic Disney style is due to technical constraints. Animation was inked and painted on transparent sheets overlayed on static backgrounds. The animated figures have to be simple and well-defined shapes because otherwise it is just too much work to ink and paint consistently over thousands of sheets (12 sheets per second of film!). The backgrounds are static though, so they can be arbitrarily subtle and detailed. Movements over backgrounds is done by moving the camera over a larger painting. The stylistic difference between background and animation can be quite jarring though, and ligne claire actually attempt the opposite effect, that figures and backgrounds have exactly the same style and level of detail.

ur-whale 5y ago

>I always found the level of detail impressive If you're into level of detail, you should take a gander at Hard-Boiled [1][2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Boiled_(comics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Boiled_(comics) [2] https://www.cuartomundo.cl/2018/03/26/hard-boiled-1990-de-frank-miller-y-geof-darrow-gramatica-violenta/ https://www.cuartomundo.cl/2018/03/26/hard-boiled-1990-de-fr...

noisy_boy 5y ago
That is very impressive level of detail though it pushes the boundary of "clean" and gets too "real" (and depending on what you are looking for, that may be a good thing). Thanks for sharing.